Editorial: We need to pursue every second chance we can get

Can hardened criminals find redemption and rejoin society? Can addicts recover? Can whole communities get a second chance?

For all of our sakes, it's a good thing the answers are yes, yes and yes.

In a lengthy and important story today, reporter Nathan Solis takes a close look at what that means for Shasta County.

It has been almost five years since April 2011, when the state Legislature passed and Gov. Jerry Brown signed Assembly Bill 109. While it didn't release state prisoners early (there is some confusion on that), the bill did transfer responsibility for many of them to local probation upon release, rather than state parole. And it mandated that many offenses, from that point on, be punished with sentences in jail rather than prison.

The U.S. Supreme Court had ruled that California's overpopulated prisons were operating in unconstitutional conditions. Whatever else you may think about AB 109, some kind of big step to depopulate the state's lockups was not a choice. There was no higher court to which California could appeal the directive.

Not only did AB 109 result in fewer folks being sent to state prison, it also meant that those released — if handed off to local probation — had less to lose from violating its terms. Now, they could no longer be sent straight back to prison. Only a new "qualifying offense" could send them back.

Then, in November 2014, California voters doubled down on the new approach, passing Proposition 47.

In changing a number of offenses to misdemeanors, it further emptied the prisons. Now, personal use of most drugs and shoplifting, grand theft, fraud and other offenses where the dollar value involved is below $950 are no longer felonies.

Ask any officer or deputy and he or she will tell you the criminals know the intricacies of these things as well as anyone. After all, it's their world. If you're an accountant, you know tax law. If you're a thief, you know you can control your risk by stealing in $925 increments. And you know that you can break your probation with smaller consequences than your parole.

These would seem to create insurmountable challenges for communities seeking to protect public safety and order. Especially communities like ours, which have handed down some of the state's toughest sentences over the years and in so doing have helped create a larger per capita group of ex-felons hardened by experience in a prison system that failed miserably at its stated goal of "correction."

Indeed, our local law enforcement officials and many of our council and board of supervisors members talked about the impact in nearly apocalyptic terms. The name of the legislation became an epithet for the unrepentant: "AB109ers," they were called.

Shasta County was woefully unprepared for the changes, and recent rise in the crime rate (more pronounced in some areas than others) combined with our collective disgust at the criminals who seemed to delight in beating the overwhelmed system made for a very unproductive couple of years.

But AB 109 was not just a means of throttling back the flow of criminals to prison. It was a 180-degree change in the philosophy of dealing with them. And it came with something the state rarely coughs up to local government — cash.

That's where the second chances come in.

They come in human form, like Shannon Starback and Roy Northcutt — formerly homeless addicts Solis interviewed who finally asked for help when they found out she was going to have a baby.

And they come in the form of cogs in a system that revolves around probation and that finally is beginning to work, even if it remains underfunded and imperfect.

We'd be the first to urge that punishments fit the crime. But if second chances lead to a real reduction in the population of people committing those crimes, we'll be a better, safer community.

Policing is expensive business — and the cost of public pensions and health care have become a serious threat to future solvency and raise the potential for taxpayers to carry an even larger burden down the road. We need to be in the best position possible to manage those costs.